- A drone strike triggered a blast so large it swallowed a Russian tank, suggesting it was laden with explosives.
- It was so powerful that the explosives hidden inside were likely to be measured in tons.
- Russian troops are experimenting with repurposing their aging vehicles as rolling bombs.
A mine stopped the Russian tank in its tracks, and a hovering drone flew in to try to finish the job. Directly overhead, it dropped one bomb, then a second. But the T-62 remained intact and unmoving.
Ukrainian operatives then slammed an exploding drone into it, devastating it with a type of disposable weapon that can be produced by Western arms makers or rigged from hobbyist drones and that’s proved its worth in Ukraine again and again. This triggered an explosion and fireball so massive that experts immediately saw it as confirmation of the latest brute force tactic by Russia troops: exploding tanks.
Russia, of course, has lost over 2,000 tanks according to online researchers who visually confirm them. But this blast stands out. It was so powerful that the explosives hidden inside were likely to be measured in tons.
—🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) June 30, 2023
One expert noted the explosion didn’t appear to decapitate the turret and send it flying like a so-called “jack-in-the-box,” a common situation in which a direct hit cooks off the tank’s ammo and unleashes secondary blasts. This blast, by contrast, appears to be even more powerful.
“I legitimately don’t think there was a turret toss here, primarily because the turret ceased to exist,” said OSINTtechnical, who is a defense analyst at the CNA research group, on Twitter.
The assessed location is also a clue. The tank exploded in Marinka, a front line in Ukraine’s east where the Russians have tried kamikaze tanks recently.
The videos don’t show any crew attempting to leave the tank. A Russian account of a previous kamikaze attack details how an armored vehicle was laden with bombs and roughly 3.5 tons of explosive, and then a crewman started it towards a Ukrainian position and hopped out.
The exploding vehicles seem to be an attempt to destroy hardened enemy positions and to terrify Ukrainian soldiers with what’s essentially a firebomb, rather than use the shock of its explosion as part of a maneuver to capture their positions.
Perhaps Russian soldiers see this as the best use of a weapon so old its production ceased well over a decade before the Soviet Union collapsed.
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